Free to Play Vs Pay to Play

There is huge a push and pull going on in the industry right in in how developers can make a free to play game that finds the right balance between giving users a free game and taking enough of the game away and charging for extra features to get users to put money into the game. Publishers being the publishers that they are are bound to completely ruin this  method of publishing games. In fact, i would argue that they already have.  Look at what happened to dungeon keeper, a  very old and beloved pc franchise : Jim Sterlings Review 

From The escapist.com

 

Long story short, they completely ruined the experience.  Jim describes the game as a complete cash cow that loses the feel of the original game. Like other similar type game, this game has an “energy” or “time” mechanic in which certain actions in the game take a certain amount of time to complete and you can skip this wait by paying a certain fee.  The problem is for this specific game, even digging out a basic room takes forever without paying anything. If  you pay nothing for this game , there IS barely a game to even play! This is completely atrocious , they ruined a beloved franchise with a garbage mechanic and content delivery system when i would gladly pay real money for a real next gen dungeon keeper experience! So my question to you is if you see these types of games having a long lifespan in the future? Is this a fad that companies will eventually demolish or are we looking at the future of content delivery.

I personally think games like Dota 2 and Leuge of Legends are literally the only two examples of games that have executed well on the  free to play  concept. It helps that these games are multiplayer and potentially never ending experiences. Whats the point of single player free to play garbage like dungeon keeper?

Theres an joke that’s being thrown around on the internet calling games like dungeon keeper Pay to play instead of free to play; essentially mocking its freeness and stating that the “Game” part of the game is locked behind a paywall

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6 Responses to Free to Play Vs Pay to Play

  1. atk5102 says:

    The goal of a game is to make money. While some people may love to build games, no one will make a high quality game and then give out everything to the player completely free of charge. They need to make money somehow. And the idea behind free to play games is to get the player’s foot in the door, and once they get into the game, get them to buy extra things to enhance the gaming experience. I think part of the reason that these games are so common is because they can’t compete with the quality of a real pay to play game. For example, World of Warcraft compared to every other MMORPG game out there. If these other games were pay to play like WoW is, they would never get any clientele. All customers would just play the more well known game that people generally know is enjoyable. So instead these games are free to play in order to attract players. And because they make no money at the beginning, they need to make money by getting the players to buying in game items. And sometimes a game will allow you to buy an item that increases your ability to play the game well for real money. This is because that is what people really want to spend money on. It sucks for the people who are much lower levels because they cannot compete. But just speaking in general, I would much rather pay for an item that makes me better than one that just looks cool. This is how I think the logic works behind free to play games. I would agree with most of the points mentioned above though, like paying for a better character is unwanted in a game. But I can understand the mentality behind making games like this, and unfortunately, as long as this style of gaming is making money, there is no reason for them to go anywhere anytime soon.

  2. zap5014 says:

    I’ve seen this mechanic that allows you to buy instant builds, gathering, etc. buy spending some special in-game currency, that can only be efficiently obtained through spending real money on the game, a great deal in the last few years. It seemed to initially most prevalent in mobile and Facebook games, where it has none become complete rampant. At first, the wait time for these games seemed reasonable if you didn’t spend money, but, as you said, they have escalated to a state where these games can hardly even be considered games if you don’t pay for them. This creates a big problem for players like me, who either do not have the kind of money needed to play games like these or simply refuse to pay real world money for them. For these types of players, who I’d like to think are the majority of people that try these games, it is a horrible business model. When I play these games, I quickly get bored within a couple days because the wait times become completely unreasonable. The big question is whether it is worth off-putting a huge part of the gamer community is worth the amount of people you can sucker into feeding copious amounts of money into these games or not. Ultimately, that’s a question that industry will have to answer.

  3. Kelly Renee Dietz says:

    I agree with you on this one. It’s a shame that most games can’t find the balance between fun a profitable. If you can’t even play the game without paying – how are you going to know if you actually want to buy it? It makes more sense to have additions to the game or special features cost money. With this – people will be more inclined to spend money on the game because you weren’t bugging them from the get-go to spend money and they will also see it as worth while because they plan on continuing to play the game.

  4. Timofei Bogatchev says:

    I think Free to Play is a great idea, but you cannot realistically expect a great and functional game that is completely free.
    Most free to play games now have taken up the “waiting” mechanic, where you must wait a certain amount of time before proceeding unless you pay real money. Its incredibly frustrating, but at the same time ingenious. You dont technically have to pay, but most people end up forking over money to skip the wait.
    Making a game and distributing it for free is hard enough, but a ton of money must also go towards support, hosting, and advertising.
    I think expecting a great online game for free is simply not realistic.
    DOTA 2 is doing a great job so far, but I’ll be willing to bet that they’ll eventually start charging money one way or another.

  5. dxg5099 says:

    I think the main problem with this issue is that many games tend to go overboard when it comes to their monetization plan for free to play games. I am a firm believer that any game where you can pay to get an advantage is not a good game. It is really aggravating when you get into a new game, and are completely outclassed by someone who has spent hundreds of dollars on various bonuses and/or powerups. An example of a game that has done it right is Dota 2. At no point can you purchase anything that will give you an edge over another player. Instead, you purchase purely cosmetic items. Most people would ask “why would I ever pay for purely cosmetic items?”. When you play the game as much as I do, you see an item or set for your favorite hero and think that it would be cool to have. I think its important to find a way to monetize your game in a way that doesn’t aggravate people.

  6. vjz5003 says:

    For the sake of gamers everywhere, I hope this is just a fad that will eventually fade out. But I don’t think this type of free-to-play with paying for extra features (or even just speeding things up) games will go anywhere soon. The free-to-play part attracts people to them, and then once they start and invest more and more time into them, they start to pay for things. I totally agree with Jesse Schell and what he says about the psychology of these games. They think that it’s worth putting money into because they’ve invested so much time into it. And I must admit, I am guilty of this. I’ve put money into games like Jungle Heat or Royal Revolt 2. They also designed the game, in my personal opinion, to make players invest a lot of time into the game before making it almost impossible to proceed without paying. Defenses and buildings are very cheap and quick to upgrade at first, but the price also goes up quickly. It gets to a point where it costs so much to upgrade, that it will either take an extremely long time to get the in-game money to upgrade, or you can just pay to get the resources to upgrade it. This frustrates me, because at this point, it’s more of a pay-to-win type game than a free-to-play. In Jungle Heat, it costs a couple million to upgrade my cheapest building, which is not east to get. I’ve put money into it twice, and at this point, I think it’s pointless to continue putting in money. While it did help me, I’m still nowhere near to being at maxed out upgrades for buildings/defenses. I would have to put so much money in that it’s inconceivable. So while I think it’s smart on the gamemakers side, I also hate it, and I hope this type of game will die in the future because it’s manipulating in a way. You want to upgrade your cannon to the highest level? You need 6 million gold. How do you get that when you harvest 600,000 gold every 16 hours with maxed out gold mines? And that’s assuming you don’t get attacked in those 16 hours and lose around 200,000 – 400,000 gold in your storage and half of the gold in your mines. At that point, you pretty much have no other choice than to pay to upgrade it and fend off those higher leveled players with high level units that blow through your lower level defenses. So while it was fun in the beginning, it’s now more of a chore and a nuisance. I feel like I’m just playing the game now because I’ve invested so much time into it already and not so much because it’s fun anymore.

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